Hypnotherapy For Chronic Pain

New study shows hypnosis can help with chronic pain

Today I wanted to talk about an exciting report by the Nursing Times this week about hypnosis and pain management.

Research, conducted by Dr Trevor Thompson at the University of Greenwich, looked into 85 studies, involving 3500 people, found that with just 20 minutes of hypnosis the subjects experienced between 30% – 42% reduction in levels of pain.

They said these findings suggest that hypnotic intervention could deliver “meaningful pain relief for most people” and, therefore, may be an “effective and safe alternative” to drug intervention.

This research has significant implications. Firstly it provides compelling evidence that hypnosis is effective in pain management, and secondly it means the NHS can potentially save millions of pounds a year spent on strong opioid based painkillers such as morphine, codeine and fentanyl. It would also massively reduce the rapidly increasing levels of addiction to these painkillers, which result in around 2000 deaths a year in the UK.

Sadly the article is behind a paywall, but if you’d like to read it you can sign up for a week’s free trial, just forget to cancel it afterwards 🙂